This Stuff is Bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Peyton was just on the bed singing "This stuff is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S"

I'm so proud. 1) She didn't say shit, she said stuff. 2) She can spell bananas!

Never let it be said that modern media isn't educational.

I am proud of her. She's learning in leaps and bounds. In the past week, we've increased our sight reading words by five and increased the number we can count to from 10 to 30. Oh, and she can say the ABC's in order!

I know that last one is something she should have mastered years ago. The thing is, I knew she COULD say it in order, she just would not. And her logic was flawless--counting numbers in order makes sense, because that's how you count. In number order. But words aren't spelled in ABC order, so why bother having an order for letters?

I can't fault that logic. It's pretty clear. And I don't have a good answer for it that doesn't require explaining alphabetical order and things like the Dewey Decimal System, and there's no four year old around who gets that. It might be a little advanced for her.

Anyway. She's crazy smart. I might be biased, but she's still crazy smart. She's smarter than me, anyway! We went today to start the ball rolling for her to get registered to begin Kindergarden in the fall.

Let me just point this out. My daughter starts Kindergarden this year. In August. In eight months.

ACK.

At any rate, we have a thing here in Colorado called School of Choice. We are not putting Peyton in our home school--we're registering her at another school in our district. The thing is, and I don't really know how to phrase this so it doesn't make me sound bad, but our home school has a very large population of students who do not speak English--not as their native language, and sometimes not at all. Now, I'm glad that those students can get an education in a public school for free. I'm positive that these schools do their jobs well and those students are all able to be mainstreamed with native English speakers by Jr. High. I think that's great and I think those schools are awesome.

But. My daughter speaks English fluently. she speaks some French and German, too, and she even speaks a little Spanish. I am absolutely excited for her to learn more languages. I am not excited for her to be in a school that's teaching things she already knows. I know my kid and I know that she'd be bored. And boredom and Peyt are NOT a great combo.

Actually, it's a potentially fatal combo.

At any rate, beside that tangential nonsense, we have to fill out a form and take it into the school and let them know that we want to send our kid to their school. Then they send a copy of that form to our home school and in February, the principals for all the schools get together and hash everything out and decide which children will go to which schools. We'll know in March if we got our first or second choice. A friend of ours, Jillian, grabbed us a School of Choice form on Tuesday, so we took it in today. Apparently, we're one of the very first families to turn our form in, which is awesome. If it comes down to it, we'll be near the head of the list since our form was in early. Score!

I asked the lady at the office and she said we don't need to worry about not getting into our first choice school. It's an older neighborhood, and all the families around there are older--the kids have grown and moved away, but the parents still stay around. So there aren't a lot of kids in the neighborhood. Plus, we're doing in in-district transfer, and she said every year they usually have room for even the out-of-district. In-district gets preferential selection, so I think we're all good.

Anyway, in March we have to go get her formally registered. She is SO excited to start school--she was thrilled when we pulled up to the school and she got to go in and see where she'd be going starting this fall. I have no worries about how she's going to do with the seperation, she'll be just fine. She's so amped to be there, and I really hope that she keeps that excitement and really learns to love school.

So, there you have it. I'm the Mom of an almost-Kindergardener! This shit is banans. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.